Subir Roy: Bangalore has its fingers crossed

OFFBEAT

Bangalore lives in limbo. It is uncertain whether it is going up or down. For most of last year it was going down. As the jobs, cars and office space multiplied, the traffic jams got worse and worse. Visiting friends who found it took an hour to traverse 10 km from IIM at Banerghatta Road to MG Road, asked: How do you guys manage?

It seemed even the gods were out to see Bangalore Bangalored. It rained and rained, the potholes got worse and worse and the civic folks in the country's technology capital either waited for the rains to stop so as to begin repairing the potholes or filled them up with rubbish and mud, to be washed away by the next shower.

When all seemed lost, the village folks decided to save the city. Political bosses who tried to play off city against countryside fared miserably in the panchayat polls. As if right on the cue, the post-rain pothole repair work had picked up steam and they actually began using the stuff with which roads are topped.

Hope is at hand in the season of hope, everyone thought, when god knows who shot at mild, harmless professor-types at the Indian

Institute of Science. If the people didn't immediately panic the newspapers made sure they did. There were pages and pages on the terror struck city when it went about its business as if nothing had happened.

My family and I couldn't make up our minds whether to be wary or bold. Our years in Delhi made us feel this is nothing. We also remembered newspaper pictures of massive crowds finishing their Diwali shopping in bargain basement Sarojini Nagar market, undaunted by massive terrorist killings the day before. But as we looked around we found the mood a little, just a little, subdued.

So we decided to celebrate the yearend in two parts "" go out on the 30th evening and stay at home on the 31st, not least because the college Christmas vacation had brought the whole family together and there was a convivial spirit in our large living room which mostly looks like a deserted badminton court.

To celebrate Burradin you have to go for continental food, I declared and called Sunny's. They had got the mood just right. We are full up right now but come late so we can give you a table, they said. I realised it was crowded all right but there wasn't really a long queue at the door, hoping to be let in before the kitchen staff dropped off from sheer fatigue.

We want to see the lights, said the children and so we got right into the MG Road traffic and jammed Brigade Road without having to find ways of killing time before they let us into Sunny's. Brigade road was its usual self at that hour, crowds and crowds of cheery people present simply to be with other people, noisily attesting to man's gregariousness, and the traffic barely moving.

Sunny's was also cheery but not over the top. On getting seated, we promptly ordered prawn cocktail, lamb chops, beef steak, and spaghetti bolognese. Give me some Indian whisky I asked and found the cheapest was Teachers, presumably bottled in India. If the food was good the dessert was outstanding. The cheesecake was both rich enough to feel you were spoiling yourself and light of flavour.

Then as we were back on MG Road not quite before midnight, the new pensiveness of Bangalore hit us. The crowds were gone from MG Road but there were still some on Brigade Road. I couldn't help feeling, Bangalore is going to face the new year with its fingers crossed, not knowing whether it will be up or down.